Mandryk: Weekes pays price for choosing the right thing over politics

If you go back more than a quarter century to the early days of the Saskatchewan Party formation, one doubts anyone had Randy Weekes on their bingo card as a potential problem for the party.

Bill Boyd? Absolutely. Jeremy Harrison? Probably. But Randall Percival Weekes? Inconceivable.

Since he was first elected in 1999, Weekes spent most of his career as either an Opposition (from 1999 to 2007) or government backbencher, except for a brief stint as rural and remote health minister from 2012 to 2014 and the past four years as Speaker of the legislative assembly.

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Except for those six years in which Weekes possessed an elevated title, most of his 25 years in elected office was spent dutifully toiling away at assigned committee meetings, loyally being available for votes and generally keeping his political nose clean. (He attended March for Life anti-abortion rallies in 2018, but that’s hardly off-brand or even problematic for the Sask. Party.)

Frankly, as a guy described as both a gentleman and a quiet right-winger generally well-liked in caucus, he’s hardly ever been in trouble at all.

So it’s a tad surprising the Sask. Party hierarchy now sees Weekes as a supposedly sour grapes troublemaker … although, upon further review, maybe we could see it coming.

For starters, he is a Speaker, and from Don Toth to Dan D’Autremont to Corey Tocher to Mark Docherty to Weekes, most were “unelected” as Speaker because the Sask. Party deemed them overly neutral.

Loyalty in the Sask. Party means loyalty to the party — above all else.

That inability to set partisanship aside was made even more clear at Monday’s special legislature meeting of the House Services Committee, called at the request of the Opposition to push for an investigation into the Speaker’s allegations of harassment against Harrison.

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Weekes quickly recused himself from the meeting about him. Harrison, who “resigned” as government house leader, was also not there to be held to account for his actions.

This was one occasion when a political resignation worked remarkably well for the politician. The remaining government committee members blocked every Opposition motion to have a public examination of Weekes’s harassment complaints and even blocked a separate, independent investigation to look into whether Harrison brought a gun into the legislature.

Notwithstanding Harrison insisting that this only happened once and that it “is the truth” (the story that came out after his untruth to Premier Scott Moe that Weekes’s allegations were “all unequivocally false”), the Speaker seems to still suspect that Harrison brought a gun into the legislature on more than one occasion. (That would certainly explain why Harrison couldn’t quite remember if it was a shotgun or a rifle or whether he was hunting coyotes or pheasants.)

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New Democrat MLA Meara Conway is right that the gun incident(s) would be lost in an internal process examining the alleged “intimidating and harassing” text messages Weekes made public on the last day of the sitting.

Given the seriousness of the gun allegations and the possibility Harrison is still not telling the truth, shouldn’t all MLAs feel an obligation to get to the bottom of this?

“This whole issue with Jeremy Harrison bringing weapons into the legislative building is serious. This is something that needs to be addressed for future Speakers and future governments,” Weekes said last Friday.

“It can’t be something that’s just ignored.”

Well, evidently, it can.

Just as they had with Harrison’s economic development predecessor Bill Boyd of the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) land fiascoSask. Party MLAs again ran interference for Harrison.

As for Weekes, he is persona non grata, begging the question: How on earth did it reach this point?

A big part is the aforementioned uber-partisanship we saw Monday, in which being a Sask. Party legislator has nothing to do with doing the right thing if the right thing produces political embarrassment.

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On Monday, Sask. Party MLAs blocked an investigation into alleged harassment of one of their members to support a member they know didn’t tell them the truth.

What more need be said?

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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